Energy Efficient Deployment of VLC-Enabled UAV Using Particle Swarm Optimization

Aerial base stations can be realized using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)-mounted access points, which offer flexible and rapid network access in scenarios where terrestrial cellular networks are challenged by high traffic loads or insufficient coverage. Visible light communication (VLC) is an emerging technology that can be integrated with UAVs to offer simultaneous communication and illumination services while having low interference, high energy efficiency, and high data rates. To achieve an efficient operation of VLC-enabled UAVs, the power consumption of the UAVs due to their mobility should be considered, as it constitutes a significant portion of the total power consumption of the UAVs, especially when compared to that of the communication needs. This paper proposes a framework to optimize the trajectories of VLC-enabled UAVs, considering a multi-objective optimization problem that jointly maximizes the sum-rate and rate fairness of the users and minimizes the power consumption of the UAVs using particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. The results show that the proposed optimization can effectively improve the performance of the system under various user mobility scenarios and UAV deployment altitudes.